With the widespread deployment of user consumer devices and home appliances equipped with wired and wireless IP (Internet Protocol) based network interfaces, the home network has become a reality. The home network is heterogeneous, as it comprises CE (Consumer Electronic) devices, telephone sets, mass storage devices, personal computers and computer peripherals which use services provided by the devices in the home network and services provided on a WAN (Wide Area Network) such as the Internet. The home network is organized around an intermediate or interconnecting device called gateway, which offers the home network devices, interconnected in a LAN (Local Area Network) a function of network interface for access to both the home network and to the Internet. The home gateway thus plays a central role. Because of its central role, the home gateway is rarely being switched off. Due to its central position in the home network and its permanent availability, the home gateway is being attributed even more complex features. One of such complex features is described in European patent application EP 2 485 162 A1 published Aug. 8, 2012, and describes a method and device for sharing of data in a heterogeneous home network comprising a plurality of different devices with a plurality of different network resource sharing protocols and different file systems. The patent application describes how, through enhancing of the gateway's functions, each home network device is able to access data shared by the other network devices according its own network resource sharing protocol and ‘seeing’ shared data as if the shared data is part of its own file system.
As the gateway plays a key role and becomes more powerful and becomes a central point for sharing data in the home network, special attention must be given to data security, as the gateway becomes an entry point to the home network and to the data the home network devices share. The gateway's central role makes it an interesting target for hackers.